An Unlikely Synergy: Lou Harrison and Arnold Schoenberg

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEVERINE NEFF
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Just Intonation ◽  
Square Root ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Henry Cowell ◽  
Musical Resources ◽  
Lou Harrison

AbstractThis essay addresses the unlikely but profound synergy between Arnold Schoenberg and Lou Harrison. Despite their personal rapport and mutual interests in visual art, they held antithetical beliefs about the nature of musical composition. Schoenberg maintained that a composition was the presentation of a metaphysical “Idea.” Harrison saw composition as the process of systematically gathering and assembling resources and techniques.After studying with Henry Cowell and Schoenberg, Harrison displayed a fascination with musical resources that led him to compose twelve-tone works using disparate compositional tools. A 1937 piano piece combines Schoenberg's methods of variation with Cowell's and Seeger's techniques of “dissonation.” The “Conductus” from the 1942 Suite for Piano, a work inspired by Schoenberg's Suite für Klavier, op. 25, explores all twelve prime forms of the row in light of Cage's square-root form. A nontonal 1944 string quartet ends on a triad like Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon, op. 41.In the 1950s Harrison rejected the aims of the total-serialist movement and found his own voice in just intonation instead. By the 1980s all vestiges of twelve-tone technique disappeared from his pieces; however, analogous serial techniques resurfaced in his paintings. Thus Harrison retained deep respect for Schoenberg as a composer, teacher, and friend.

Henry Cowell and the West Coast Dance Scene

Artful Noise ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Thomas Siwe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Henry Cowell

Modern dance and music for percussion are linked through the works of musicians who studied with the iconoclastic composer Henry Cowell. This chapter highlights the work of numerous artists who were involved in the dance and music scene along the West Coast of the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Cowell’s early publishing venture New Music helped launch the careers of composers Johanna Beyer, William Russell, Lou Harrison, John Cage, and others. The latter two composers, Harrison and Cage, also studied with the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg whose use of the twelve-tone technique became central to the music of the twentieth century. The chapter ends with a summary of percussion music’s development from the decades before World War I to the compositional hiatus caused by World War II.

scholarly journals Invariance properties of Schoenberg's tone row system

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Fill ◽  
Alan J. Izenman
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Arbitrary Length ◽  
Invariance Properties ◽  
Special Case

AbstractThis paper organizes in a systematic manner the major features of a general theory of m-tone rows. A special case of this development is the twelve-tone row system of musical composition as introduced by Arnold Schoenberg and his Viennese school. The theory as outlined here applies to tone rows of arbitrary length, and can be applied to microtonal composition for electronic media.

Introduction to Motives

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Brent Auerbach
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Formal Definitions ◽  
Art And Architecture

Chapter 1 of Musical Motives provides a general introduction to the topic of motives. The etymology and origins of the word “motive” are briefly considered, along with its parallels to the “motifs” of visual art and architecture. A working definition for “motive” from Arnold Schoenberg (“the smallest part of a piece or section of a piece that, despite change and repetition, is recognizable as present throughout”) is presented in advance of more formal definitions to be presented in chapters 4–7. For the purposes of this study, motives are required “to move” and “to move listeners.” Analyses of excerpts from Sousa, Beethoven, and Mozart introduce readers to proper motivic identification and labeling technique.

New Musical Resources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Nickleson
Keyword(s):  
Music History ◽  
Harmonic Series ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Upward Movement ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Henry Cowell ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Musical Resources ◽  
Charles Seeger ◽  
Overtone Series

New Musical Resources is a book written by Henry Cowell in 1919, unpublished until 1930. In it, Cowell proposes a theory of musical relativity in which pitch, rhythm, and the progress of music history are grounded through reference to the structure of the overtone series: the "living essence from which musicality springs." Ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger encouraged a young Cowell to rationalize the compositional tools he had been developing, which ultimately led to the creation of this book. In the book’s first section, Cowell presents the development of Western harmony as progressive upward movement through the overtone series. He suggests the continuation of this same logic into chords based on the ratios beyond the minor seconds that he was using to create "cluster chords." His rhythm chapter proposes the whole-note as the basic unit of time, encouraging division beyond the standard multiples of two into the next numbers in the harmonic series—creating third-notes, fifth notes, etc. This method enables the composition of rhythmic patterns that rely on the same ratios as are present between various melodic and harmonic intervals. Many American composers—notably Conlon Nancarrow—have utilized Cowell’s concepts, which predate the development of similar ideas in integral serialism by several decades.

Lutyens, Elisabeth (1906–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Hawkes
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
Chromatic Scale ◽  
Dylan Thomas

(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE, was an English composer, credited with helping to establish the twelve-tone method of serialism in Britain. Lutyens’s first major composition using this technique, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 7, was premiered in London on the first night of the blitz in 1940. Lutyens insisted she came upon this technique herself, and was not inspired by the work of Arnold Schoenberg, who is acknowledged as its pioneer. In the twelve-tone method the notes of the chromatic scale are ordered into a series that functions as a unifying principle for harmony, melody and variation—all twelve notes of the scale are sounded an equal number of times in a composition to ensure no emphasis on any one. Lutyens often coupled this specialized atonal technique with literary and philosophical text, setting to music writers such as Joyce, Wittgenstein, Beckett, and Dylan Thomas, to create a music both praised and critiqued as intellectualized.

Beat and Square Cold War Encounters

2019 ◽  
pp. 317-371
Author(s):  
W. Anthony Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Henry Cowell ◽  
Duke Ellington ◽  
Japanese Music ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Lou Harrison ◽  
Toru Takemitsu

This chapter is focused on the transnational influences of Japanese music during the Cold War and on music’s role in U.S. cultural diplomacy efforts aimed at Japan. This includes examples of numerous American jazz musicians (David Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Herbie Mann) who were sent to Japan and who created musical “impressions” of their experience. A primary focus in on the 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter organized by Nicolas Nabokov and attended by multiple American composers (Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Colin McPhee) and scholars (Robert Garfias). The chapter then details the broad influence of gagaku on European (Messiaen, Stockhausen, Xenakis) and American composers, focusing particularly on Alan Hovhaness. Experimental composers, such as Richard Teitelbaum, inspired by John Cage’s engagement with Zen also turned toward Japan. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the role of Japanese music and Japanese composers (particularly Toru Takemitsu) in the career of Roger Reynolds.

Serialism

Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Serial Music ◽  
New Students ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Fruitful Research

Since Arnold Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone system in the early 1920s, serialism has been the subject of a continuous torrent of scholarship. At least in part, this is the result of an experimental attitude that has marked serialism since its inception. No two major serial composers have used the same set of tools; indeed, the creation of new serial techniques seems to have been a necessary stage in the growth of a serial composer. This individuality naturally has consequences for scholarship. For one, it has meant a profusion of writing by composers. Some of this writing comes as compositional theory, as composers—from some mixture of a desire to share fruitful research, to facilitate the comprehension of their music, and to stake claims on their inventions—have written about serial procedures that interest them creatively. Some comes as aesthetic manifesto, as composers seek to justify their unique approaches. The great diversity of serial compositional techniques and aesthetics has also led to a flourishing of analysis, as analysts work to define and interpret the many separate practices composers have developed. Yet serialism’s individuality has also contributed to dramatic critical pushback: a running theme among commentators has been that serial music is inaccessible to nonspecialists. The prose written by serial composers has also generated much critical commentary, for many justifications given for their work have been shown to be problematic from political, cultural, and historical perspectives. The sources included in this bibliography give a sampling of the best work from all of these discursive branches as well as a selection of more general resources to help new students of serialism find their footing. Finally, a word about the scope of the article is in order. In the English-language literature, “serialism” and, interchangeably, “serial music” refer broadly to music based on systematic permutations of pitch classes or other elements. Twelve-tone music, accordingly, is the first prominent instance of serialism. French scholarship uses a similarly broad connotation of “musique sérielle,” which encompasses “Le dodécaphonisme” or “musique dodécaphonique” (i.e., twelve-tone music). German scholars, in contrast, have tended to differentiate between “Zwölftonmusik” (twelve-tone music) and “serielle Musik,” the latter distinguishing itself by the application of serial techniques to rhythm, timbre, intensity, and other musical dimensions. This article adopts the English-language definition of serialism.

Reminiscence, Reflections, and Resonance: The Just Intonation Resophonic Guitar and Lou Harrison's Scenes from Nek Chand

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIACOMO FIORE
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Just Intonation ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
Terry Riley ◽  
Lou Harrison

AbstractUpon accepting a commission for a solo guitar piece from the 2002 Open Minds Music Festival in San Francisco, Lou Harrison decided to write Scenes from Nek Chand for a unique instrument: a resonator guitar refretted in just intonation. Harrison's last completed work draws inspiration from the sound of Hawaiian music that the composer remembered hearing in his youth, as well as from the artwork populating Nek Chand's Rock Garden of Chandigarh, India.Based on archival research, oral histories, and the author's insights as a performer of contemporary music, this article examines the piece's inception, outlining the organological evolution of resophonic guitars and their relationship to Hawaiian music. It addresses the practical and aesthetic implications of the composer's choice of tuning, and examines the work of additional artists, such as Terry Riley and Larry Polansky, who have contributed to the growing repertoire for the just intonation resophonic guitar.

Representing the Extraordinary Body

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Straus
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Mental Capacity ◽  
Small Stature ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
Musical Modernism

Art historian Tobin Siebers has recently argued that modern visual art is centrally concerned with representing and finding new sorts of beauty in the fractured, disfigured, disabled human body. This essay asks whether the modern in music manifests itself as disability. Focusing on the Stravinskian strand of musical modernism and taking the second of his Three Pieces for String Quartet as a case study, this essay notes that the music can be understood as representing disability in its shape and appearance, its movements, and its implicit mental capacity and affect. Stravinsky’s description of this music as his effort to represent musically the appearance and “the jerky, spastic movements” of a famous music hall performer, Little Tich, whose small stature was perceived by contemporary observers as a grotesque deformation, suggests the music may be understood not only to represent disability generically and metaphorically but also to represent a particular disabled body.

scholarly journals The Expectancy Dynamics of Anti-Tonal Twelve-Tone Rows: A Commentary and Reanalysis of von Hippel & Huron (2020)

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Niels Chr. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Music Cognition ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Anton Webern ◽  
Alban Berg ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Information Theoretic Measures ◽  
High Uncertainty

This commentary provides two methodological expansions of von Hippel and Huron's (2020) empirical report on (anti-)tonality in twelve-tone rows by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. First, motivated by the theoretical importance of equality between all pitch classes in twelve-tone music, a full replication of their findings of "anti-tonality" in rows by Schoenberg and Webern is offered using a revised tonal fit measure which is not biased towards row-initial and row-final sub-segments. Second, motivated by a long-standing debate in music cognition research between distributional and sequential/dynamic tonality concepts, information-theoretic measures of entropy and information content are estimated by a computational model and pitted against distributional tonal fit measures. Whereas Schoenberg's rows are characterized by low distributional tonal fit, but do not strongly capitalize on tonal expectancy dynamics, Berg's rows exhibit tonal traits in terms of low unexpectedness, and Webern's rows achieve anti-tonal traits by combining high uncertainty and low unexpectedness through prominent use of the semitone interval. This analysis offers a complementary–and arguably more nuanced–picture of dodecaphonic compositional practice.

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